The contract was $219,489 for five years of licensing and ballot-programming services for the borough’s annual municipal elections.
The scanning machines also count the ballots for the City of Fairbanks and the City of North Pole’s municipal elections.
Borough code requires municipal ballots to be counted by machines, which are proven faster, more accurate and cheaper than hand-counting.
“According to FNSB code, chapter 5.24, ballot counting procedures specifies ballots are counted by optical scan or other computer, red or electronic ballot precincts,” said Borough Clerk April Trickey. She reported that the borough already owns ballot scanning machines, having spent $359,956 in 2020 and an upgrade in 2022. The current five-year contract expires on April 17, 2025.
“This contract does not purchase any additional software or equipment as the borough owns the software and the equipment that we currently have,” she explained.
Without the contract renewal, the borough would not have the license to use the machines it already owns.
Trickey reported that before the borough bought its own machines, local municipalities used the “Accu-Vote” ballot-scanning machines that were owned by the state, for about 20 years. Before that, the borough used punch-cards after the code was changed to require machine-counting in 1981.
Trickey’s report to the assembly came after about an hour and a half of public testimony, all of it opposed to machine-counting of ballots. Some testifiers mis-understood what the assembly was voting on, thinking the measure was to buy new ballot-counting machines.
Others said they mistrusted any ballot-counting machines after a 2023 visit to Fairbanks by election skeptic Douglas Frank, whose theories about election fraud cause by voting machines being hacked have been largely debunked.
In the recording of last Thursday’s Assembly Finance Committee meeting, Trickey took time to explain how the current system works, by having the machines hooked up to phone lines, not the internet, at the end of election day, to transmit election data back to servers at the borough building.
She said now most precincts in the borough report results by 9:00 p.m. on election night, with absentee and questioned ballots getting counted 7 days later.
Assembly member Brett Rotermund asked about changing the voting system.
“If we were to vote this down tonight and get rid of our current machines and go back to a hand counting process, how will that affect the upcoming election?” Rotermund asked.
Trickey explained, “This assembly would have to adopt an ordinance to go back to hand counting voting. 'Cause right now I'm supposed to conduct our elections using computer-counted ballots.”
Some other municipalities in Alaska hand-count ballots, but few of them are as large as the FNSB. Matanuska-Susitna Borough changed to hand-counting ballots in 2022, and conducted its first election with that system last November (2024.)
“After talking with Mat-Su and some of the issues that they're having, when I talked to the borough clerk there, she had called me today (Thursday) and I had asked her, how long did you, how long did you go? She said, we went to 5:30 in the morning.”
In Assembly debate, some members like Barbara Haney and Scott Crass said it did not matter that the vote-counting machines were secure with no reported hacking, because public perception trumps that.
“The people that have come and supported me, helped me get elected, do not want these machines. I'm, I'm one with the machines, you know. But, um, and I hear repeatedly a lot of people out there who are not voting because of these machines,” Haney said.
“There’s not been a tremendous amount of evidence presented that has swayed me to believe that our elections have been unduly influenced. However, I have seen an enormous amount that people are being disenfranchised because they believe they are,” Crass said.
Member Barbara Haney moved to postpone voting on the contract until the Assembly could check with the Cities of Fairbanks and North Pole. But that was voted down.
The contract extension was voted down 4 to 4, with no majority, with Crass, Kristan Kelly, Liz Reeves-Ramos and David Guttenberg voting yes. Haney, Rotermund, Tammie Wilson and Nick LaJiness voted against the contract. Assembly member Mindy O’Neall was absent.
